"HEY, I HEARD THAT!" Richie yelled, knocking hard at Jeff's locked door. "I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING -- LET ME IN!"
Cody held back a chuckle, and smiled at Jeff. "Richie, I'm changing! Go away!" he lied. In reality, Jeff was just perusing more possible changes. With the antenna set at the door, the machine whizzed and pulled up Richie's stats. Cody was 'ooo'ing and 'ahh'ing along with him. He whispered, "What does that button do?"
If eyes could make sounds, Richie's eye roll was as loud as a fire alarm. "Yeah, RIGHT, with Cody in the room?!" He started pounding harder, shaking the walls.
Jeff knew he would never go away if he sounded like he was feeding him lies. "Not my clothes, you numbskull!"
Damn it, Richie thought. Somehow, he figured out he was turned into a 'cow'-boy... and he must be 'changing' himself back to normal, he concluded. Damn. It had been so fun to 'milk' his brother, and now the fun was over. Why didn't it seem to matter that he had set the awareness to 0%? And...
WAIT. Richie knew that if he was in proximity of the Chronivac thing, that Jeff could take out some kind of revenge on him. Shit! He needed to get away from his room, and fast!!! Richie took off and ran outside to the backyard... he'd run off to go see his neighborhood friend down the block until Jeff and Cody were gone, and then he'd try to get that toy back for good.
Unbeknownst to Richie, though, was that he was now the only person with any knowledge that Jeff was not supposed to be part-Cow. Without being able to see him behind the locked door, he figured he was changing himself back. In addition, the Chronivac stored all data of any individual that ever came within 20 feet of the device. No matter how far Richie ran away, he could still be transformed.
----
They heard the footsteps and the opening and shutting of the porch door. Jeff flicked his ears. They didn't know why, but Richie was gone, thankfully.
He reverted his attention back to the computer. "So... yeah, when I got this thing in the mail and was looking at it before, one of the featured transformations on the main screen was an iguana... you know, kinda like a lizard? I thought it'd be funny - "
"Oh, DUDE!" Cody laughed. "Give him an iguana's tail!"
"Haha. That's what I was thinking!" He gave Cody a much-appreciated high five. He imagined Richie would go ballistic. This was why they were best friends.
Cody watched as he opened the transformation package. "Is this really going to work? I mean... it's just a toy."
With the perception of reality settings in place, and the anthro Iguana package loaded into the program, Jeff changed Richie's tail setting from 'N/A' to the iguana tail, or '100%' Iguana. The transformation process would take about 5 minutes - and without a time period, Jeff realized with a smile, he would be transformed as long as Jeff wanted him to be.
"Dude, if this thing doesn't work, I want a refund."
"How much did you pay for it?"
Jeff winked with a toothy bovine grin. "... Nothing."
Cody playfully punched him in the shoulder. With the antenna still locked in, the process started to commence. 3.... 2.... 1.... Start.
The image of Richie with an iguana's tail finally came up, and they laughed in delight at the hilariousness of the image, with the huge tail seemingly stitched to his butt.
"Seriously though ... this won't work, Jeff."
"Hey! You wanna bet?!?! Let's go find Richie - I bet he went over to his stupid friend's house to play on his trampoline. We can watch them from the window."
-----
Richie rang his buddy Corbin's doorbell, and together they went into the house and through to the backyard where Corbin had his trampoline. Eager to just run off some energy and push each other over like sumo wrestlers, they climbed on and jumped and challenged each other for the highest jump.
"Can't you jump higher than that?" Corbin teased him.
Richie noticed something weird... he started to feel like he was losing balance mid-air and was being pulled backwards. But nothing seemed wrong - he was probably just out of practice from not jumping for a while.
But the imbalance was consistent, and without putting much thought into it he reached to pull up the back of his pants - only to realize, there was now a huge bulge above his ass preventing him from doing so.
"What the heck? I didn't fall there that hard...!"
"What's up, Rich?"
Richie stopped trying to jump, but when he did, he fell onto his back on the trampoline. "OW!!"
Corbin stopped jumping as well. "Come onnnn... don't stop now! We've barely been out here - "
"Corbin, something feels weird there, does it look bad?"
Corbin, seemingly confused, shook his head. "... No? Dude, you look fine. Get up."
The bump was growing. It pushed his pants down and he felt a weird sensation begin to overtake him. Then, he could see something ... between his legs, made initial visualization with the tip of the... a green, scaly tail. "Oh .... no."
"Oh no what?!" Corbin asked.
He looked up at Corbin. Could he not see what was happening? Oh boy.
Richie rolled over to the edge of the trampoline and got off to the ground, barely landing on his two feet and slipping his shoes back on.
"Where are you going!?!? Come ON! Don't go now!"
He shouted back as he ran away, "Sorry, Corbin! I'll call you later!"
The changes were getting worse, and he could feel the tail getting longer by the second. Unfortunately, his pants were slipping down as well, and Richie took a wrong step and fell onto his face right before running through the gate back to his backyard, spraining his ankle.
"Noo!!! JEFF!!!" he shouted. "Help me!"
From the window, Cody and Jeff looked down at Richie, and they could see the green tail extending out his back... one foot... two foot... three feet long now. Cody's mouth was agape, and Jeff was smiling ear to ear.
"Jeff, I'm serious!!! Stop this!"
Four feet long now, and still growing, the transformation process was nearly complete. He could barely make it out, but he could see the scaliness and the spikes on the base ridge of his spine. That tail was probably five feet long! Richie tried to get up, but he had to crawl over to the fence gate and unlock it, dragging his spiny tail on the ground and through the wet grass.
"Wow, Jeff..." Cody managed to say. "It really works."
And then, at about six and a half feet long, nearly two feet longer than Richie's height when standing, the tail looked to stop growing, and the Chronivac machine stopped whizzing away. Process complete.